As if their story was a seed, Amanda,that fell by chance into some stone niche and nursedby warm air and rainspun fine filaments of root to earthand is the small forest in which they wander.On the wall in glittering anklets the painted beauties danced.Self-contained and gossamer. Sarah and Nadiafollowed into the disallowed and all thatwithin their own limbs leapt.

HIMALAYA

Go. Summon all the mountains, says Himalaya. The ash-smeared god wants my daughter. (At his feet silver river veins, banana leaves, lemons,trekkers on trails gaping up.) They come, their faces grim: Manaslu. Gasherbrum I. Dhaulagiri. The Annapurnas. K2. Kanchenjunga. Lhotse. These, that Franz was always going on about, that we’d beheldfrom the valley floor where we waited for avalanche soundto roll over and smother us, that Meissner the crazy Germanand some other guy had climbed without oxygen,can’t decide. It lies with the god and girl.The sleeping bag between them on the cold floor.The girl has made up her mind but she’s not a god.

NADIA, IT TURNS OUT, IS A RIVER

Can make case for Durgā marry Buffalo Demon, said Nadia, plaiting her pale hair.Very rich, handsome, with army, track record, has real estate of all gods. Jason thought we had two more weeks of her at least but then she wrapped herselfin the Godavari and fled east to where the seaunraveled her tawny edges into lead and silver, leaving ussuddenly tributaries offering all we had, our wan elixirleached from villages each with its elders and gods of illness.We’re going to myth her, said Lee to Glen, who had arrived the day before,from Hyderabad, with Jim.

EVENING, ROOF OF THE GUESTHOUSE, PUSHKAR, RAJASTHANAs the man and woman stand in jeans holding handslooking out at the lake, a pregnant cow in a nearby lanenuzzles clots of garbage that squabble and scuttle away.After the man turns, gently removing her necklace, dipping itin the cistern three times, and after he holds it up againstthe backdrop of the town and she steps away,hands over her mouth, the two waiting crows depart,leaving him, as she does, leaving him standing thereby the pink and yellow saris hung out to dryin the imperceptible breeze that is, this evening, filledwith a fine dust invisible except as a coronagilding everything not already in shadow.

VARANASI IIWhat we have brought here in our handWhat we have here under our hand will not fall awayIt has attached itself it has becomeAn attachmentAn attachment that will never leaveA petal that is not fragileA bronze marigold, maybe

Something gold falls to earth and rolls awaySomething cold falls and rolls awayOne thing the one thing that would never leaveBecame cold and rolled away when we arrived

Here was where the god brought His great sin in His handIt followed Him as he wanderedThe fell thing followed HimIt was His fell attachmentThat never left HimBut when He arrived at the river it fell from His handHere on the riverbank He will never leaveThe day broke and I found the crown of your head under my handIn what worlds were you I wonderedWhere in the gold worlds did you wanderWhile parrots scolded themselves in the neem trees and the warm where my body had beenRose into cold airIn the new light I could see your head, all gold, under my handIn a new light your gold headAnd it fell awayIt fell away here

I will carry here back with me, she thoughtI will bring it back with meUnder my hand invisible through customs in some cavityNo head will attach itself to my handI will find no head, ever, under my handHere will never leave, it will be everywhere with me

YEARS LATER, SINGAPOREIn the evenings it’s gods in the mirrors, bronzeand heavily-armed: Glocks, camo, Marlboros, Ray-Bansthe distinguishing iconography of the highly-muscular.All these stories, she thought, and nota riveting past life or parable in sight.

Let me go over this again for youhere at the Long Bar: compared to that moment in Durga’s shrine,when in the dark we swore,no Buffalo Demon stepping downfrom an unmarked chopper matters.

LATERLater I remembered looking up at our windowthat could never have opened outonto mornings thick with frangipani and dung-fire,nor offered, in the middle distance, a viewof the old banyan by the well,whose branch-threads, reaching down,each one imagining itself the core of a new forest,are adorned with small shredsof sere cloth printed with prayersor the hand-written pleas of the soldier’s wife,who, as we were told upon our arrival,buried her bracelets one afternoonand then walked, behind her dark eyes,toward the banks of the river.In that life, Ananda, I was the soldier

Notes to the Poems“One Afternoon Sarah Gets Lost in the Street of Butchers/The Goddess Durgā Promises Blessings”The text in italics is drawn from translations of the Devimahatmya, Ch. 12.26-29.

“Nadia, It Turns Out, Is a River”At her birth, Durgā, the Goddess as Warrior, was given all the gods’ powers so that she could battle Mahisha, the Great Buffalo Demon, who had driven the gods from heaven, earth, and the underworld. Durgā refuses Mahisha’s offer of marriage,and after defeating his army, beheads him.

“Later”Ananda was a much-loved disciple of the Buddha. Many of the Jataka Tales (“Birth Stories” from the Buddha’s prior lives) were told to Ananda.

Elizabeth T. Gray Jr. is a poet, translator, and corporate consultant. Her collection of poems, Series | Indiawill be published by Four Way Books in April 2015. Her translations from classical and contemporary Persian include The Green Sea ofHeaven: FiftyGhazalsfromthe Diwan-i Hafiz-i Shirazi (1995) and Iran: Poems of Dissent (2013). Sections of the Tibeto-Mongolian folk epic “The Life of King Kesar of Ling,” co-translated with Dr. Siddiq Wahid of the University of Kashmir,were included in Columbia University Press’s Sources of Tibetan Tradition (2013) and appeared in TheHarvard ReviewOnline. Other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Little Star,The Kenyon Review Online, New England Review,Ploughshares, AGNI, The Harvard Review, Best NewPoets 2012, and elsewhere. She was the founding CEO/Managing Partner of Conflict Management, Inc. and Alliance Management Partners, consulting firms that assisted global corporationsand government form, manage and repair complex inter-organizational alliances. She has a B.A. and J. D. from Harvard University and an M. F. A.from Warren Wilson College. www.elizabethtgrayjr.com.